Site Navigation

Site Mobile Navigation

Summer 2016 News Quiz | June 7-Sept. 5, 2016

Both the Republican and Democratic conventions were held in July. Related ArticleCredit Damon Winter/The New York Times

Updated, Sept. 6

The 13 weeks since our last News Quiz have produced dramatic headlines around the globe, from the “Brexit” decision
to the Republican and Democratic National Conventions to the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro — as well, sadly, as a rash of massacres so relentless that The Times published a health piece in July on what a constant cycle of violent news is doing to us.

Below, 52 questions to help you remember and learn more. Try to answer them all without looking at the word bank at the bottom of the post.

We will continue to update this post with the top news stories from now until just after Labor Day. Then, starting Sept. 13, our regular 10-question interactive Weekly News Quiz will resume and publish most Tuesday mornings throughout the school year.

Summer 2016 News Quiz

Directions: Clicking each blank in this quiz will take you to the original Times source for that entry so you can check your answer.

1. On June 12, a gunman killed 49 people and wounded 53 more when he opened fire in a crowded _________ in Orlando, Fla., making it one of the worst mass shootings in United States history. The shooting reverberated through some of the most divisive issues roiling the United States: gay rights, gun control, immigration,
the Islamic State and homegrown terrorism, and fear of Islam.

2. Court documents and almost daily revelations fed the furor over “rape culture” on college campuses after a California judge sentenced a former _________ University swimmer to just six months on three felony counts of sexual assault. Denunciations of the sentence and widespread support for the victim suggest that the cultural attitude toward rape may be shifting.

3. On June 19, LeBron James delivered on the grandest stage of his superhuman career, leading the _________ to their first championship in franchise history with a 93-89 victory over the Golden State Warriors in Game 7 of the N.B.A. finals.

4. The Supreme Court on June 23 rejected a challenge to a race-conscious admissions program at the University of Texas at Austin, handing supporters of _________ a major victory.

5. The same day, the Supreme Court announced that it had deadlocked in a case challenging President Obama’s immigration plan, effectively ending what Mr. Obama had hoped would become one of his
central legacies. The program would have shielded as many as five million _________ from deportation and allowed them to legally
work in the United States.

6. On June 27, the Supreme Court reaffirmed and strengthened constitutional protections for abortion rights, striking down parts of a restrictive Texas law that could have drastically reduced the number
of abortion clinics in the state. The 5-to-3 decision was the court’s most sweeping statement on abortion since Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992, which reaffirmed the constitutional right to abortion established
in 1973 in _________.

7. On June 23, Britain voted to leave _________, a historic decision
that set off an immediate wave of geopolitical, economic and cultural shocks. World markets plunged, Prime Minister David Cameron resigned, the British pound fell to a 31-year low, and European leaders began hashing
out the logistics of an unprecedented breakup.

8. But Britain managed to keep order during a high-speed political transition. _________, the former home
secretary, curtsied before the queen and took up the post of prime minister just two days after her last rival to lead the Conservative Party dropped out. Charged with navigating Britain’s exit from the European
Union, she filled crucial cabinet roles with Brexit backers.

9. Partisan clashes over _________ erupted into a chaotic fight in late June
on the House floor, where Democrats staged a 25-hour sit-in to demand votes on measures on the issue. Congress adjourned for a recess, however, and none of the proposed bills advanced.

10. Three suicide attackers killed at least 41 people and wounded dozens more at _________’s main
airport on June 28, in the latest in a string of terrorist attacks in Turkey, a NATO ally once seen as a bastion of stability but now increasingly consumed by the chaos of the Middle East.

11. Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter on June 30 removed one of the final barriers to military service by lifting the Pentagon’s ban on _________ serving openly in the armed forces.

12._________, the Auschwitz survivor who became an eloquent witness
for the six million Jews slaughtered in World War II and who, more than anyone else, seared the memory of the Holocaust on the world’s conscience, died on July 2 at the age of 87.

13. During celebrations for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, a minivan packed with explosives blew up and killed nearly 330 people on July 2 in central Baghdad. The attack was the deadliest there since
at least 2009. _________ almost immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, foreshadowing a long and bloody insurgency
as the group reverts to its guerrilla roots because its territory is shrinking in Iraq and Syria.

14.The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, on July 6 recommended no criminal charges against Hillary Clinton for her handling of classified information using a private _________ while she was secretary of state, lifting an enormous legal cloud from her presidential campaign.

15. Ducking through intense belts of violent radiation as it skimmed over the clouds of _________ at 130,000 miles per hour, NASA’s Juno spacecraft on July 4 clinched its spot around the solar system’s largest planet. It took five years for Juno to travel this far on its $1.1 billion mission.

16. The Justice Department opened a civil rights investigation into the fatal July 5 shooting of a black man, _________,
by the Baton Rouge, La., police after a searing video of the encounter reignited contentious issues surrounding police killings of African-Americans.

17. That same week, another black man, Philando Castile, was shot and killed by a police officer during a traffic stop in a suburb of St. Paul. A passenger documented the aftermath in video streamed
on _________.

18. Three days later, a retaliatory attack on white police officers shocked the nation as a black Army veteran with a troubled history opened fire on officers patrolling a protest in _________ against the two earlier police shootings of black men. He killed five officers and wounded others in a standoff that ended only when the police sent an explosives-laden robot to blow him up, a tactic of war.

19. Even as political leaders, protesters and law enforcement officials struggled to find common ground and lit candles of shared grief, there was an inescapable fear that the United States was being
pulled further apart in its anger and anguish over the issues of race and law enforcement. Then, on July 17, three police officers in _________,
a divided city still struggling with the raw and churning emotions set off by the shooting of Mr. Sterling, were killed in a shooting that officials say was also a crime targeting law enforcement.

20. An international tribunal in The Hague delivered a sweeping rebuke on July 12 of _________’s
behavior in the South China Sea, including its construction of artificial islands, and found that its expansive claim to sovereignty over the waters had no legal basis.

21. On July 14, a Tunisian immigrant with no known radical ties killed 84 people and injured hundreds in the Mediterranean city of _________.
He barreled into holiday crowds with a huge rented truck, turning a mainstay of Western commerce into an instrument of mass death.

22. A stunning _________ in Turkey in mid-July left 260 people dead, thousands
of soldiers rounded up and thousands of judges purged. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared a three-month state of emergency and fired or detained tens of thousands of soldiers, civic officials and educators.

23. The Republican National Convention got off to a rocky start on July 18 with a speech from _________ that
borrowed key passages, word for word, from Michelle Obama’s speech at the Democratic convention eight years ago.

24. In the most electric moment of the convention, boos and jeers broke out as it became clear that _________ — in a prime-time address from center stage — was not going to endorse Donald J. Trump. It was a pointed snub on the eve of Mr. Trump’s formal acceptance speech.

25. Mr. Trump accepted the Republican nomination on July 21 with a speech decrying the “violence in our streets and the chaos in our communities.” The party he now leads is deeply fractured,
with the Washington establishment hewing to positions on trade, immigration and globalism that have been rejected by Mr. Trump and the disaffected _________ who form much of his base.

26. A lone gunman killed nine people and seriously injured 27 others near a shopping mall in _________ on July
22. The 18-year-old appears to have acted alone and had no apparent ties to any terrorist group. The Times writes that “the
horrifying rash of massacres during this violent summer suggests that public, widely covered rampage killings have led to a kind of contagion, prompting a small number of people with strong personal grievances and
scant political ideology to mine previous attacks for both methods and potential targets to express their lethal anger and despair.”

27._________, once one of the most powerful figures in the media industry, was ousted from his job as the chairman
of Fox News on July 22 as the company investigated sexual harassment allegations against him. Gretchen Carlson, a former Fox anchor, had filed a lawsuit against him earlier in July, and others then stepped forward
with similar complaints of inappropriate behavior.

28. Olympic officials sanctioned Russian athletes on July 24, but stopped short of completely barring them from the Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro. Athletes had to appeal to individual sports federations
to gain eligibility in the wake of widespread, government-ordered _________ at the last Olympics.

29._________ became a widespread obsession in mid-July, sending people into
streets and parks all over the world, and spawning anecdotes about people falling off cliffs, discovering dead bodies and wandering unthinkingly into the street. But Saudi clerics renewed a fatwa against it,
calling it “un-Islamic”; Bosnia warned players to avoid chasing virtual monsters across very real leftover land mines; and a member of Egypt’s Parliament denounced the game as “the latest
tool used by spy agencies.”

30. According to emails made public just days before the Democratic National Convention by WikiLeaks, top officials at the _________ criticized and mocked Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont during the primary campaign, even though the organization publicly insisted that it was neutral in the race.

31. Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton, who sacrificed personal ambition for her husband’s political career and then rose to be a globally influential figure, became the first woman to accept a major
party’s presidential nomination on July 28, a prize that generations of American women have dreamed about for one of their own. Declaring that the nation was at “a moment of reckoning,” Mrs.
Clinton urged voters to reject the divisive policy ideas and combative politics of the Republican nominee, Donald J. Trump. But demonstrations inside and outside the convention hall made clear that Mrs. Clinton
has some work to do to persuade at least some die-hard supporters of _________.

32. Mr. Trump said on July 27 that he hoped _________ had hacked Hillary Clinton’s email, essentially
encouraging an adversarial foreign power’s cyberspying on a secretary of state’s correspondence. Mr. Trump’s call was an extraordinary moment at a time when the country is being accused of meddling
in the United States presidential election.

33. Prosecutors in Baltimore on July 27 dropped all remaining charges against three city police officers awaiting trial in the death of _________,
ending one of the most closely watched — and unsuccessful — police prosecutions in the nation.

34. Four cases of _________ in Miami were highly likely to have been caused by infected mosquitoes, the Florida Department
of Health said on July 29 — the first documented instance of local transmission in the continental United States. Three weeks later, federal health officials advised _________ not to visit a 20-block stretch of Miami Beach, one of the country’s most alluring tourist destinations. At the same time, in _________,
the epidemic is raging, and the island’s response is in chaos.

35. A federal appeals court on July 29 struck down North Carolina’s _________ requirement, upending voting procedures in a crucial state slightly more than three months before Election Day.

36. A play that is being billed as the eighth book in the _________ series
arrived on July 31 with an enormous first printing of 4.5 million copies and became an overnight blockbuster, selling more than two million hardcover copies in the first 48 hours.

37. Donald J. Trump belittled the parents of a _________ who had strongly denounced Mr. Trump
during the Democratic National Convention, saying that the soldier’s father had delivered the entire speech because his mother was not “allowed” to speak. The confrontation between the parents,
Khizr and Ghazala Khan, and Mr. Trump has emerged as an unexpected and potentially pivotal flash point in the general election.

38. On his first trip to Central and Eastern Europe, _________ expressed
concern that young people “confuse happiness with a sofa” as they become indifferent to the increasingly dark events of the world. He also dismayed leaders of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender
groups when he said that schoolchildren are being taught they can choose their gender as part of what he called an “ideological colonization.”

39. Brazil, the first _________ country to host the Olympics, is reeling from an astonishing combination
of political upheaval and economic crisis. Its efforts to stage the world’s biggest sporting event have met trouble at every turn, from the Zika virus to polluted waters to budget cuts so deep that basic
operations became strained. So the opening ceremony of the Summer Games arrived Aug. 5 as a salve, disguising the wounds for a few hours and letting Brazilians celebrate.

40. On Aug. 7, _________ gave the United States its first swimming gold medal of the Rio Olympics
with a world record in the women’s 400-meter freestyle. She went on to set another world record in the 800-meter freestyle and became the first swimmer to sweep the 200-meter, 400-meter and 800-meter races since Debbie Meyer in 1968.

41. Many athletes logged historic victories during the Rio Games, including _________,
the most decorated Olympian in history, who won his 23rd and final gold medal on Aug. 13; _________,
the world’s best gymnast, who won the women’s individual all-around gold medal on Aug. 11; _________,
who became the first African-American woman to win an individual swimming event at the Olympics; _________, the
“Iron Lady” of Hungary, who won three golds in swimming in four days; and _________ of Jamaica, called the fastest man in the world, who was the first sprinter to win a triple-triple, leading Jamaica to victory in the 4×100 meter relay on Aug. 19 and winning a third gold medal for the third
consecutive Olympics.

42. After giving a lurid interview on Aug. 14 about being robbed at gunpoint along with three teammates, _________,
an American swimmer and 12-time Olympic medalist, touched off an international firestorm that quickly transcended sports. Brazilian authorities accused him of fabricating his account and said that the group had
drunkenly vandalized a gas station bathroom.

43. In mid-August, Donald Trump laid out his economic plan and gave a major speech on terrorism,
calling for “extreme vetting” of immigrants. He also defended criticism — some from fellow Republicans and advisers — about his turns of speech, including making a comment that has been
seen as inciting violence by suggesting “_________ Amendment people” could act against Hillary Clinton, and
calling Barack Obama the “founder of ISIS.”

45. On Aug. 14, President Obama declared storm-drenched _________ a major disaster area. At least 11 people died and thousands were
displaced by flooding.

46. After a black police officer shot and killed a fleeing armed black man in _________ on Aug. 14, angry crowds took out their frustration on the police and property during two days of street demonstrations.

47. Dozens of Syrian civilians have been killed as fighting rages in _________, a divided city that was once the country’s
industrial center. The struggle reflects a wider scramble in Syria, as government forces and rebels invest all they have but come no closer to a victory nor to reaching a political solution.

48. Shaking up his presidential campaign for the second time in two months, _________ hired Stephen
Bannon, a top executive from Breitbart News, as the Republican’s campaign chief, thus completing a merger between the most strident elements of the conservative news media and the Republican presidential
nominee.

49. A strong earthquake struck a mountainous stretch of central _________ early on Aug. 24, killing at least 241 people,
trapping scores under debris and setting off tremors that awakened residents in the capital city, nearly 100 miles to the southwest.

50._________, who established himself as one of America’s foremost comic actors with his delightfully neurotic performances
in three films directed by Mel Brooks; his eccentric star turn in the family classic “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”; and his winning chemistry with Richard Pryor in the box-office smash “Stir
Crazy,” died on Aug. 29 at his home in Stamford, Conn. He was 83.

51. France’s highest administrative court on Aug. 26 overturned a town’s ban on _________, the full-body
swimwear used by some Muslim women, setting a precedent that challenges similar bans in at least 30 other municipalities, most of them on the French Riviera.

52. She was known throughout the world as _________, considered a saint by many for her charitable
work among the poorest of the world’s poor. On Sept. 4, Pope Francis officially bestowed that title at her canonization ceremony in St. Peter’s Square.